OPINION: Clearcutting and herbicide spraying: the story never ends

It’s a cycle that has been repeating itself for half a century in Nova Scotia, ever since Scott Paper set up in Pictou County and set out to transform the diverse forests in the province into pulp plantations to feed its voracious pulp mill — and it starts with clearcutting.

After that, one of two things happens. The denuded landscape starts to heal itself with regrowth, often pioneer species that over time would be replaced by the mix of hardwoods and softwoods that make up healthy and biodiverse Acadian forests. Or else it is planted with monocultures of spruce or fir, the conifers preferred for pulp.

Either way, next comes spraying — often from a helicopter — of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Monsanto’s Vision or Vision Max, which kill off any pesky hardwood upstarts that dare to try to rise out of the destruction of a clearcut. After a few decades, it starts all over again.

In 2015, the World Health Organization’s research arm labelled glyphosate a “probable carcinogen” and in 2017, a long-term study published in Science Reports linked “chronic ultra-low dose” exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides with liver disease in rats.

The same year, documents unsealed by court order in the United States revealed collusion between an official in the Environmental Protection Agency and Monsanto to falsify academic reports and stifle others to give glyphosate-based herbicides a clean bill of health. More recently, California has added glyphosate to its list of cancer-causing agents that must come with a warning label.

Not in Nova Scotia. Here, the Department of Environment defends its widespread use on farms and forests by saying that the Canadian Pest Management Control Agency has determined glyphosate to “be safe when used as directed on the product label,” presenting “low risk.” And so each year, in addition to the untold amounts of glyphosate sprayed on the crops we feed our children and livestock, the government also issues approval for herbicides to be sprayed on woodlands.

The purpose, according to Nova Scotia Environment spokeswoman Chrissy Matheson, is “to allow softwood to grow faster by suppressing growth of other species.”

Maybe not just plant species.

Rod Cumberland, a former provincial biologist with New Brunswick’s Department of Natural Resources, has found that glyphosate harmed the province’s white-tailed deer population by reducing their food supply. Yet governments in both provinces continue to endorse spraying, promoting pulp forestry. Finding out and publicizing the possible negative effects the herbicides have on wildlife, insects and other pollinators and the overall health of forested land, is apparently not their priority.

This year, the provincial Environment Department has approved six applications for herbicide spraying on 61 private properties in seven counties, some close to municipal drinking water watersheds. The total area of the properties is over 147,000 acres, of which nearly 127,000 are leased or owned by Northern Pulp.

Matheson says these approvals allow spraying on 2,260 hectares (5,585 acres), slightly less than last year, when spraying was approved for 2,950 hectares (7,290 acres). Last year, however, the approvals posted on the Nova Scotia Environment website provided details on the site locations and sizes, what herbicide was to be used, how it was to be applied and the purpose of the spraying.

Not so this year. Now, it is not possible to find out which herbicides are being sprayed or maps showing areas slated for spraying unless one has the means and time to submit a freedom of information request or to drive all the backroads around the 61 properties to find small notices that are posted before spraying occurs.

Asked about the reduced transparency in the approval forms online, Matheson said there had been a change in the “computer system.”

Pushed on why they were no longer available to the public online, she offered this puzzling explanation: “This system is used for all different types of approvals issued by Nova Scotia Environment, and generates the information needed for an approval.”

Say again?

Thirty-one years ago, Ralph Johnson, chief forester with Bowater Mersey in Nova Scotia, had this to say about the unhealthy pulp forestry regimen of clearcutting, planting and spraying that produces low-value forest products: “Our children will pay dearly for these past errors and for our current errors in managing natural resources.”

You can say that again . . . and again.

Joan Baxter is a Nova Scotia journalist and award-winning author, vice president of the non-profit association IMPACT (Integrity Management, Promoting Accountability and Transparency). Her forthcoming book about the pulp mill in Pictou County, The Mill — Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest, will be published in October by Pottersfield Press.